...like punk is not dead
Yeah, the famous ''distros'' are ''dead'' (MS-DOS,PC-DOS...), but some are still ''alive''.
I started this topic because saw that one member suprised with how anyone today use DOS
Today DOS is cheap system to someone who has small private bussines (as doctor, dentist...) and why he/she for one program which use to buy expensive licence for multitasks OS?
DOS has long history, so you can find very big collection of software for it.
Currently ''distros'' are:
-DR-DOS 7.03 by DR DOS Inc.
-ROM-DOS 7.1 by Datalight
-PTS-DOS 32 by PhysTech Software
-ZDOS by Zebor Technology
and there are some open-source ''distros'' which are theoretically immortal:
-FreeDOS (I think version 1.1)
-RXDOS
-RTXDOS 2000 (derivate of RXDOS)
-NX-DOS

and smaller, not so famous ''distros''...
DOS available and for other architectures as MSX,PDP-11...and almost those ''distros'' are dead...

Today DOS is cheap system to someone who has small private bussines (as doctor, dentist...) and why he/she for one program which use to buy expensive licence for multitasks OS?

Actually, the *BSD can do all this, & they are free too. Some might argue that they are more free.

Personally, I wouldn't be so risky to base a business on DOS. While a quick Google search did reveal that some word processors are still available, I question how long drivers will remain current. Equally problematic, a large part of business is based upon sharing documents, & when a potential partner or customer wants you to write up a proposal & it isn't written in a Word-compatible form, you may have killed the deal.

DOS proper was also limited to 640KB of memory. Yes, there was DPMI, but do all third-party applications support it?

The problem in advocating that DOS is not dead is that anyone seriously using it will be entirely on their own -- meaning all support, configuration, & troubleshooting. While there may be someone who has the technical acumen to fix everything that breaks or needs to be enhanced, how much time will they be dedicating to the effort? Will the core business suffer from lack of attention?

While it might be a romantic notion that DOS can be made viable today, the rest of the world most likely doesn't share in the nostalgia.

Absolutelly, for longtime distance future is guaranted for BSDs' & Linuxes' distros as sure.Proprietary OSes will available as their publishers. DOSes are almost proprietary OSes, and only one open source version is still active, but its development is so, so, so slow (my opinion)...DOS is good as I said for small bussines if customer use one or two programs and have no time to learn other OSes.And they are the best as you said for nostalgia, as ZX Spectrum emulator and nowday free or public domain games for it

Also there are so many fakes maybe more than any other OS, and in the most cases they are from Russia newer (and they are absolutely illegal) and older from East bloc (in some cases their legality is unknown because they are so good clones of Western famous DOSes).

I use FreeDOS for a LiveUSB/CD I make. It includ~1 some basic utiliti~1 such as hard disk testing tools etc. we use at work.
Don't worry, it also includes a FreeBSD part

The main reason I use FreeDOS by the way is because our techni~1 are used to the various tools. But it also comes in handy when flashing mainbo~1, even some fairly recent ones only support flashing the BIOS from DOS.

In general, however, I believe DOS is a piece of junk, and most contem~1 OS's fared better on almost every single point at least since the late 80's...

__________________
UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things.

I wonder how many nuclear power plants still use DOS. I guess it would be a much safer bet than Windows XP+ and the online activation ensuring it will die off (and thus ensuring nuclear meltdown).
I heard OS/2 was a popular option with power stations.

I wonder how many nuclear power plants still use DOS. I guess it would be a much safer bet than Windows XP+ and the online activation ensuring it will die off (and thus ensuring nuclear meltdown).
I heard OS/2 was a popular option with power stations.

LOL - Yes, DOS was once pretty prolific. Recently, I needed to reflash my bios, and so (like CarpetSmoker) - I downloaded a copy of FreeDOS to do that job. When I was finished, I decided (for the shrill thrill) - to try to run a web browser on FreeDOS. I found a ported Lynx for DOS, and used it to surf around the web for awhile. That's when the 640k problem revealed itself. Even a heavily modified Lynx is in trouble in a time when a single web page can be easily in excess of what remains of a 640K system after the app footprint and the resources of the OS are taken into consideration. The Lynx had been modified to "bail" before it exhausted all its memory, and then to display only what it could successfully consume. I could surf quite a few sites this way - some better than others. Of course, a DPMI port could fix the memory problem, but would be a lot of work for a couple of nostalgia seeking old farts.

Yet - I can see that DOS had some beauty in its simplicity. And, for apps that were well debugged, the reliability was quite high (as per the nuke quote). The next time you're in a shop, take a peek around the clerk to the POS. You'll be surprised at how many shops still use good ol DOS POS software.

I installed DOS 6.22 recently to help someone with a project. The joys of memory management, autoexec.bat and config.sys editing, packet drivers *shudder*. I don't miss doing it as part of my job (although that was more NT 3.5.1 at the time) - BUT, it did bring me back in a nostalgic way. I've been seriously thinking about investing some time in building up an old DOS Pentium or 486 to run some of the classic games I loved.